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claire shipman
Sanders Meets Freed Trump Political Prisoner Khalil as Columbia Punishes Gaza Protesters
"We must not allow Trump to destroy the First Amendment," Sanders said as the Ivy League school expelled or suspended scores of students in what critics called a bid to win back blocked federal funding.
Jul 22, 2025
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday met with Mahmoud Khalil—the former Columbia University Palestine defender recently imprisoned by the Trump administration—on the same day that the school expelled or suspended more than 70 students who protested Israel's genocidal obliteration of Gaza.
Sanders (I-Vt.) posted a photo of himself with his arm around a beaming Khalil, with the caption: "I met with Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student at Columbia University, who was imprisoned for 104 days by the Trump administration for opposing [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's illegal and horrific war in Gaza. Outrageous. We must not allow [U.S. President Donald] Trump to destroy the First Amendment and freedom to dissent."
Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent married to a U.S. citizen, last year finished his graduate studies at Columbia. He was arrested at his New York home by plainclothes Department of Homeland Security officers on March 8 before being transferred to New Jersey and then Louisiana, where he missed the birth of his first child.
Accused of no criminal offense and widely considered a political prisoner, Khalil was arrested following Trump's issuance of an executive order authorizing the deportation of noncitizen students and others who take part in pro-Palestine demonstrations. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also invoked the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952—which allows for the deportation of noncitizens whose presence in the United States is deemed detrimental to foreign policy interests—to target peaceful Palestine protesters who have committed no crimes.
Khalil was released last month upon a federal judge's order. He is far from the only student jailed for opposing the Gaza genocide; others include Mohsen Mahdawi and Yunseo Chung—both permanent U.S. residents—as well as Rümeysa Öztürk, Badar Khan Suri, and others.
On Tuesday, Columbia announced disciplinary action against more than 70 students who took part in last year's protests for Gaza at the New York City school's Butler Library. Around 80 Columbia students were arrested amid the violent police crackdown on campus encampments and occupations.
"While the university does not release individual disciplinary results of any student, the sanctions from Butler Library include probation, suspensions (ranging from one year to three years), degree revocations, and expulsions," Columbia's Office of Public Affairs said in a statement.
The school's announcement came days after Columbia and Trump administration officials met in Washington, D.C. to negotiate an agreement to restore most of the nearly $400 million in federal contracts for the university that were canceled in March over an alleged failure to tackle antisemitism.
As part of the deal, Columbia agreed to adopt the dubious International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism, which critics say conflates legitimate criticism and condemnation of Israeli policies and practices with anti-Jewish bigotry, and forces people to accept the legitimacy of a settler-colonial apartheid state engaged in illegal occupation and a war that experts increasingly agree is genocidal.
The school also said it would partner with the Anti-Defamation League on antisemitism training. Last year, the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the ADL for what it called a "pattern of enabling anti-Palestinian hate."
Columbia University interim president Claire Shipman has already been working with white nationalist Stephen Miller—Trump's White House deputy chief of staff and a primary architect of the president's first-term migrant family separation and Muslim travel ban policies—to restore lost contracts.
Columbia's acquiescence to the Trump administration comes as Israeli forces have killed or maimed more than 215,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, including at least 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Most of Gaza's more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced, often multiple times, and hundreds of thousands of Gazans are starving amid an increasingly fatal famine fueled by Israel's siege of the enclave, which is partly the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
Israel has also been accused of committing scholasticide in Gaza, where every university has been destroyed or damaged.
"Hundreds of academics have been killed. Books and archives have been incinerated. Entire families have been erased from the civil registry," said one student quoted in a recent Columbia University Apartheid Divest blog post. "This is not a war. It is a campaign of erasure."
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Columbia President Greeted With Chants of 'Free Mahmoud!' During Graduation Speech
"You arrested us!" graduates shouted at one point in acting president Claire Shipman's address.
May 20, 2025
Columbia University administrators seemed intent on proceeding with an undergraduate commencement ceremony Tuesday as though the Ivy League school hasn't been at the center of student-led anti-genocide protests and government efforts to crack down on free speech for more than a year—but graduating students ensured the school's treatment of student organizers was front-and-center.
As acting president Claire Shipman approached the podium to address students at Columbia College's graduation, she was immediately met with loud booing.
She addressed the response, saying she knows many students feel "some amount of frustration" with her and the administration—but many of the graduates appeared uninterested in hearing from the university leader less than two weeks after she authorized the New York Police Department to enter the campus and arrest dozens of student protesters for occupying the university library in solidarity with Palestinians.
The Trump administration announced shortly after the arrests that they were reviewing the visa status of the student protesters—their latest escalation against pro-Palestinian organizers at the school.
"You arrested us!" graduates shouted at one point in Shipman's address, as she congratulated the Class of 2025 for making it "through one of the most rigorous schools in the world."
Mahmoud Khalil, the 2024 graduate who helped lead negotiations with administrators last year regarding divestment from Israel's military operation in Gaza, was also top-of-mind for many students who started chanting, "Free Mahmoud!" early in Shipman's speech.
"The work of your generation will be to shape these interesting times," Shipman said as the chants rang out.
More than two months after immigration agents arrested Khalil outside his on-campus apartment, he remains in detention in a Louisiana Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility. University trustees allegedly gave Khalil's name to the Trump administration ahead of his detention and the Trump administration's revocation of his green card, and administrators did not provide him with protection earlier this year when he told them he feared being swept up in the White House's plans to crack down on free speech.
The Trump administration is pushing to deport Khalil, claiming the pro-Palestinian views he expressed at student protests are detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests. Khalil was one of thousands of U.S. college students who took part in protests calling for schools to divest from companies that benefit from Israel's assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians in 19 months and has included a blockade on humanitarian aid, pushing the civilian population toward famine.
Since stepping in as acting president in March, Shipman has met with faculty that object to Columbia's capitulation to the Trump administration; mentioned the names of Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, another student who was marked for deportation but subsequently freed; and started a website for students who fear deportation.
But students' response on Tuesday suggested they've taken more notice of Shipman's summoning of the NYPD earlier this month and the school's agreement to the Trump administration's demands aimed at rooting out what the White House claims is "antisemitism"—including imposing a ban on masks, appointing an administrator to oversee Middle Eastern and Palestinian studies, and hiring dozens of "special officers" authorized to swiftly remove students from campus.
Students erupted in jeers and laughs when Shipman praised the Class of 2025 for being "curious, determined, and open-minded," and again chanted, "Free Mahmoud!" at another point in the speech.
A larger commencement ceremony is scheduled for Wednesday. Columbia University Apartheid Divest called on members of the school community to attend a protest action coinciding with the graduation.
"No commencement as usual under genocide," read a social media post announcing the protest.
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Trump Admin 'Reviewing' Visas After Arrest of Dozens of Pro-Palestinian Protesters at Columbia
"Repression breeds resistance—if Columbia escalates repression, the people will continue to escalate disruptions on this campus," wrote Columbia University Apartheid Divest.
May 08, 2025
The New York Police Department arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian protestors on Columbia University's campus on Wednesday evening—prompting U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to announce on X that the federal government is reviewing the visa status of those involved in the action.
On Wednesday afternoon, masked protestors, many wearing keffiyehs, gathered in Columbia's Butler Library. Video of the protest posted to social media shows demonstrators inside the library chanting "free Palestine."
Columbia has been under intense scrutiny from the Trump administration in recent months over the school's alleged failure to protect Jewish students. Critics say the administration is weaponizing antisemitism to attack Palestinian rights advocates. In March, the school faced backlash for making policy changes in line with demands from the Trump administration following the administration's decision to freeze $400 million in federal grants for the school.
Late Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X: "We are reviewing the visa status of the trespassers and vandals who took over Columbia University's library. Pro-Hamas thugs are no longer welcome in our great nation."
In January, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order with the professed aim of rooting out antisemitism at higher education institutions, and vowed to target foreign-born students who have engaged in "pro-jihadist" protests.
Acting university president Claire Shipman authorized the NYPD to enter campus around 7 pm on Wednesday in response to the rally in the library, according to the Columbia Daily Spectator. The student paper reported that the NYPD arrested roughly 75 protesters and began leading them out of the library shortly thereafter.
The Daily Spectator also reported that there were altercations between the police and protestors after the arrests made in connection to the library protest.
Eighty people "who did not comply with verbal warnings by the NYPD to disperse" were taken into custody, according to the NYPD, per reporting from CNN. Seventy-eight of those taken into custody were arrested and two others were issued summonses, the NYPD told the outlet. CNN noted that it's not clear how many of those arrested came from the protest inside the building.
The group Columbia University Apartheid Divest wrote on Substack on Wednesday that the protestors renamed the library in honor of Palestinian activist Basil al-Araj.
The organizers said that the action at the library "shows that as long as Columbia funds and profits from imperialist violence, the people will continue to disrupt Columbia's profits and legitimacy. Repression breeds resistance—if Columbia escalates repression, the people will continue to escalate disruptions on this campus."
In May of last year, the NYPD swept an occupation of Hamilton Hall and arrested dozens of student protestors.
Wednesday's events come not long after arrests by federal immigration agents of multiple noncitizens who had been active in pro-Palestine actions on Columbia's campus.
In March, federal immigration agents arrested pro-Palestinian activist and former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, who is currently languishing in an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Jena, Louisiana. Another Palestinian green-card holder active in Columbia's student protest movement, Mohsen Mahdawi, was also arrested by federal immigration agents, but last month was released on bail.
Both of those cases have generated significant national attention.
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